Film Reviews!

Being shut in from illness is cause for much movie watching. So today I'm going to force my opinions of recently viewed films on all of the unsuspecting readers who come here to learn about a pop band. March of the Ego! Hear me roar!

First the Good/Great.

Capturing The Friedmans. I've blathered on about this film before but I'll say again that "Capturing The Friedmans" is by far one of the
most engaging documentaries ever made.

"Capturing The Friedmans is nothing short of the most riveting, provocative, and hotly debated films of the year. Despite their predilection for hamming it up in front of home-movie cameras, the Friedmans were a normal middle-class family living in the affluent New York suburb of Great Neck. One Thanksgiving, as the family gathers at home for a quiet holiday dinner, their front door explodes, splintered by a police battering ram. Officers rush into the house, accusing Arnold Friedman and his youngest son Jesse of hundreds of shocking crimes. The film follows their story from the public?s perspective and through unique real footage of the family in crisis, shot inside the Friedman house. As the police investigate, and the community reacts, the fabric of the family begins to disintegrate, revealing provocative questions about justice, family, and -ultimately-truth."

The Bad

The Simpsons Movie. Sometimes it's fun watching a train wreak sometimes it's merely nauseating. This is a bad idea, followed by a failed execution. I sat and silently cringed....Then I watched a few episodes of the vastly superior "Family Guy" to nullify the lingering taste of excrement that "The Simpsons Movie" had left in my mouth.


The Ugly.

The Notebook. Ok. I adore well made "emotional" films. "Sense and Sensibility" is one of my all time favorites, I loved Eastwood's "Bridges of Madison County" give me any Merchant Ivory film and I will sit in weepy attention. Being that a Cassavetes spawn made this film (and it featured Gena Rowlands) was enough to get me to watch "The Notebook" while imprisoned with illness. Sadly I remembered to late that I had already seen this fucking thing months ago, but like the forced anal evacuations in a damp/cold basement at the hands of a silent, fishy smelling uncle, I had purged this nightmare from my consciousness.

"The Notebook" makes me pine for the made-for-television films of my youth. It made me pine for the commercials broadcast in the made-for television-films of my youth. It made me desire a slow death by water boarding. It made me appreciate splinters. This film features the singularity most annoying person to be ever committed to celluloid: Rachel McAdams. My only hope is that Ms McAdams has found Jesus, has moved to a Promise Keepers compound somewhere in Nevada and has altogether given up her Thespian yearnings in favor of silent prayer and sexual servitude.